like havin' a home of your own, an' knowin' you've got a shelter for your old age—no, indeed, they ain't! The Squire's mighty well fixed; he's got a real good farm, an' turnpike stock, an' cash, an' a nice, comfortable house besides."

"Comfortable!" exclaimed Sally, with a toss of her head, and breaking her resolve to keep silent. "It looks like a ha'nted barn stuck back amongst them cedar trees down in the hollow. No wonder his first wife went crazy an' hung herself up in the attic, poor thing! They say he treated her shameful mean."

Sally had looked upon this house many times and with conflicting thoughts as she passed it now and then. An air of neglect and loneliness hung about the spot. The house, hopelessly ugly and angular, was set far back from the road in the midst of a large yard given over to weeds and untrimmed shrubbery, while a clump of gloomy-looking cedars defied even the brightness of sun and sky.

"You can't put credit into everything you hear," admonished Mrs. Brown, breaking ruthlessly into her daughter's musings. "Besides, a spry young girl can pretty much have her own way when she marries a man so much older than herself.

"There's Serena Lowe, that use' to be," she continued, reminiscently. "She an' her fam'ly was about as poor as Job's turkey when we went to school together, an' many's the time I've divided my dinner with her because she didn't seem to have any too much of her own.

"But she had a downright pretty face—all white an' pink, like a doll's—an' it helped her to ketch old Bartholomew Rice, an' now she rides around in her own kerridge an' pair, mind you, an' no prouder woman ever lived this minute. You'd think from the airs she gives herself that she was born in the best front room on a Sunday.

"The Squire's as good as hinted to me that if he could marry the one he wants, he wouldn't in the least mind goin' to the expense of paintin' an' fixin' up the place till you wouldn't know it," insinuated Mrs. Brown, dropping her voice to a more confidential tone.

"He'd have to paint an' fix hisself up, too, till you wouldn't know him, either, before I'd even so much as look at him," tartly asserted Sally.

"A tidy young wife could change his looks an' the looks of the house in a mighty little while, if she only had a mind to do so," suggested Mrs. Brown, in subtly persuasive tones. "It must be dreadful lonesome livin' as he does, with nobody to look after things."

"He might have kept his nephew for company," insisted Sally, with a sudden ring of resentment in her voice. "He drove him away."

"Which likely he wouldn't have done if Milt hadn't been so headstrong an' wild. You know the Squire's goin' to have his own way about things."

"About some things," corrected Sally.

"Mebbe about all, sooner or later," said Mrs. Brown, in hopeful prediction. "He ain't a man to give up easy when he sets his mind in a certain direction."

"Perhaps his nephew isn't, either," suggested her daughter, with a little tinge of color deepening in each cheek.

"No, an' that's just the cause an' upshot of the whole trouble!" cried the mother, in a sudden flash of vehemence, dropping the persuasive tones she had heretofore employed for resentful chiding. "His nephew's at the bottom of it all, an' you seem ready an' willin' to throw away a good chance of a nice, comfortable home an' deprive me of a shelter in my old age just for the sake of that no-account Milt Derr, who happens to have smooth ways an' a nimble tongue. It looks like he's fairly bewitched you."

CHAPTER II.

A little later in the morning Sally tied on her sunbonnet, whose pale blue lining made a charming framing for her fresh complexion and pretty face, concealing it just sufficiently to make one keenly inquisitive to take a second longer glance beneath the ruffled rim.

With the basket of eggs swung coquettishly on her plump arm, and a stray wisp or two of wavy hair escaping from its confines down her shapely, curving neck and throat, in protest at imprisonment, the girl set out walking toward the town, a mile away.

Mrs. Brown had ingeniously delayed her daughter's going by finding several little duties for her to perform, hoping the while that before the girl should be ready to start the Squire would make his appearance and leave her no alternative but to accept a ride with him.

The morning grew apace, however, and finally Sally set out alone, quite grateful for the Squire's tardiness, and partly amused, partly vexed, by her mother's thinly-veiled excuses for delay.

As the girl walked along the road with the springing, elastic step of youth and perfect health, and the freedom of the far-stretching fields as a heritage, the fresh morning air caressing her cheeks brought forth a bloom as soft and delicate as the rose of a summer dawn, while her spirits, which had become somewhat dampened under her mother's recent bickerings, gradually grew soothed and calmed under the tranquil charm of the new-born day.

Now and then a bird, startled at her approach, flew from hedge to hedge across the road, piping loudly in affected alarm as it went, while in a softer strain came the gentle lowing of cattle from a pasture near at hand, and in the tall grass and dusty weeds along the way the autumnal chorus of insects had begun, conducted by the shrill-toned cricket.

At the top of the first hill that arose between the gate and town Sally paused a moment—not that she was tired, or even spent of breath—and looked back. The picture that she saw was one of serene beauty, with wide stretches of fallow fields, bathed in the golden tranquility of a perfect October day, and dumb with the spell of restfulness and mystic brooding that this season brings.

In the far distance a long, ragged line of hills melted into the soft blue sky-line, and over these shadowy sentinels, standing a-row, the purplish haze of autumn hung like a diaphanous curtain stretching between the lowlands and the hill country.

From her elevated vantage ground the girl could see the toll-house very distinctly, though she herself was partly hidden by a small clump of young locusts under which she had paused. As she looked toward her home the Squire's old buggy came in sight around a curve of the road and stopped at the gate. Her mother came out and presently pointed in the direction of town, while the Squire gave his horse a cut of the whip and started up the road at a much brisker pace, it seemed to Sally, than before the gate was reached.

"Mother's told him that he might overtake me," she muttered, grimly smiling at the thought. "I'll see that he don't," she added, resolutely.

She stood for a few moments debating the situation, then looked toward the town. The distance was but half traveled, and the Squire must certainly overtake her before her destination was reached. There was a smaller hill beyond, and toward this she now set out briskly, fully determined to cover as much of the way as possible, so that, if finally overtaken, the ride would prove but a short one at best.

When she reached the brow of the second hill the Squire was lost to sight behind the first one, and just then a plan of escape happily suggested itself as she reached a low stone wall running for some distance along one side of the road. She lightly climbed the moss-covered stones and crouched down behind them in a clump of golden-rod, waiting in covert until the Squire should pass.

Soon she heard an approaching vehicle, which she knew to be the Squire's from the familiar joggle of loose bolts,